All heart

I had a 50 minute conversational run today. This would have proven tricky without any companions, but luckily Chris and Nige decided to come with me despite threats to the contrary. (This was Nige's undoing, and I hope he doesn't suffer any serious injury from the decision). Anyway, excitingly for Sal and I, Nigel lent me his heart rate monitor thingy, so I can now record my heart going boom boody boom boody boom boody boom boody boom boom boom (goodness gracious me). Which it certainly did, quickly soaring up to  160, where it happily stayed. It was good confirmation that I had a heart, which I was beginning to worry about. AND Nigel also lent me a cunning water bottle thing that is easier to hold. I took a picture of him and Chris for you. Nige is still in sporty red (evil eye).

I did learn an amazing number of exciting things on my run today, which I was prepared to share but frankly, I've forgotten them all. Oh, I learned that Mrs N is quite short, because Nigel said it was true that he always fancies a short one, and qualified it thus (so it looks like Ian is safe after all). I also learned that Nigel likes hunting runners down. This also needs to be qualified, but I'm not sure, frankly, that I can change the way it sounds. Nigel and Chris decided to walk for a bit, because Nigel got a hurty knee, which was why he'd initially opted for a shorter run, so I went on ahead, secure in the knowledge that I would get back first (for the one shower), so proceeded, maintaining a comfortable 10 m/m; when Nigel came pounding up behind me, raising my heart rate by 5bpm at least. When I shared my surprise he said he was sorry, but he can't help hunting runners down. He says it's his technique in races, and is great, except when they hear you coming and speed up, which is irritating. I mentioned that I sometimes have difficulty overtaking walkers, which I find disheartening.

Let's see, we discussed training technique for marathons, as Nigel is an old hand, but unfortunately he isn't given to questioning as much as I am, so he didn't have all the answers, although he tried to reason it out, i'm still not convinced. The question being, a few people have suggested I'm over-training for this half-marathon, and that I can easily make 13.1 miles now I've already run 10, so really I could quit training already. I can kind of answer this myself - surely it depends if you want to finish the race at some point within the allotted 3.5 hours, or if you want to do it in a race-time. I kind of feel I'm going in for a run, not a walk, and I'd like to therefore do a "run", and prepare properly for it. Call me a perfectionist. And once I've decided to do something properly, I want the instructions, I want to know how, and I want to give it a good go.

Admittedly I left it a bit late to join the sugar craft class for Emma's wedding cake, and a little advance on 3 and a half weeks before the wedding to start a four week course would have been helpful, but the class was invaluable in teaching me what I needed to know to ice her cake. And her cake was much better than the thing I made for the class as well.
 
Similarly, when I went to the Great Barrier Reef, I learned to scuba before I went, ignoring advice that I could learn when I got there. I didn't want to spend time in Australia worrying about weight belts and air control when I had coral and fishes to gawp at. Both are things I didn't regret in the least. (And before any divers point out that this is not the Great Barrier Reef, I know. It is the Red Sea. It's just a better photo of me diving than the GBR)

And I told Nige about my second ever open water dive, when my o ring blew at 10 m, and I honestly remembered what I'd learned in the class, and thought "Yes, the underwater environment IS surprisingly noisy". I thought I'd tap my buddy on the shoulder anyway, and to be honest, I hadn't remembered his eyes looking that goggly. He gave me his spare reg and turned off my air, and we made a buddy-assisted ascent. He was very impressed with me for being so calm. It's easy to be calm when you are completely ignorant of the danger you are in, of course. (Not that it was life-threatening in this instance, but I was still pig-ignorant). Nige told me a much scarier story about a friend of his who thought his buddy was right behind him, and it turned out she'd run out of air and had passed out. Even worse was that it was his wife (and he still liked her). They were lucky and had a happy ending, although for some reason they don't dive any more.

Anyway, the point about learning how to do things properly was that I don't understand why you'd want to run further than the distance when training for a half marathon, but not do the same when training for a full marathon. I mean, yes, if you can run 23 miles, you can probably do 26, but why not check it out? That is what I'm seeking answers to.

Well, after Nige caught me up, his knee gave him pain again, and he had to walk again, so I trotted off. I imagined Dave, and did a sprint finish (well, what passes as a sprint for me). I'd just started stretching when Sal arrived back from lunch. She virtually pounced on the garmin and gave me a full run-down of my stats, mile by mile. I didn't have the heart to tell her that I keep my eye on it every few minutes, but I could have told her that the readings she gave me for my average heart rates per mile were about right. She quizzed me on my conversational ability, and I assured her that Nige and I had been chatting away. She said "You seem to have a peculiarly high working heart rate, because most people can chat at 150, not 166." She thinks this means she can set my bands higher when she is working out my optimal, for future torture exercises. She says she is going to assume my final sprint is about 80% of my full capacity.

I didn't like to tell her it's just because it's virtually impossible to shut me up, although obviously it would probably be to my advantage to confess.